I had the pleasure of sharing a car journey with Dan Ilet this morning. At least I was joined by his dulcet tones on my iPod in the form of his new audio book called Get Quoted.

Get Quoted is available via iTunes priced £7.99 and is a 45-minute media training guide to mastering press interviews.

Ilet has a great pedigree. He’s the founder of Greenbang.com an online environmental technology and CSR publication. I should disclose at this point that I occasionally write a column for Greenbang called the Grumpy Environmentalist.

During his career as a journalist Ilett has written for The Economist, The Financial Times and numerous technology publications and is regularly called on by PR firms and their clients to media train executives.

In Get Quoted Ilet covers the basics of the media in 2010, preparing for interviews and how to give a good interview, all in an incredibly upbeat, accessible format.

I had three key takeaways:

• always test your story – use the mantra of the news editor, “so what”, “so what”, “so what”
• prepare for interviews – develop key messages and learn the basics of managing an interview
• always get back a journalist before deadline – very basic stuff but very few people do

Ilet is critical of the role of the PR industry as the gatekeeper to stories. But in Get Quoted he’s produced an excellent product to help the industry do it job properly.

It’s a must have for anyone that works in PR or speaks regularly to the press. You can quote me on that.